With the advent of the IEEE 802.11 wireless communications standard, a new market in wireless communications was born. The 802.11 communications standard describes a protocol for allowing wireless devices to communicate with a wireless base station. The wireless base station (also known as an Access Point or AP) provides a network for the wireless devices connected wirelessly to the wireless base station. In addition, the wireless base station can further be connected to a Local Area Network (LAN), a Wide Area Network (WAN), a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), a dedicated line, or the like. Such a connection provides further network access to the wireless devices connected wirelessly to the wireless base station. Wireless network access for users of wireless devices is beneficial, as it provides users with added communication abilities when moving around a building or office, or traveling and otherwise on the road. Wireless network access, however, does not come without its drawbacks.
A wireless base station regularly broadcasts beacon packets (every 100 ms, for example) to all of the client stations (i.e., wireless devices) connected wirelessly to the wireless base station. A beacon packet holds a variety of information for processing by each wireless device connected wirelessly to the wireless base station. One aspect of the information that is present in a beacon packet is traffic indication. Traffic indication is information that indicates whether or not there is data buffered for any of the wireless devices connected wirelessly to the wireless base station. Traffic indication information, however, is located almost at the end of a conventional beacon packet.
A client station (or wireless device) must process an entire beacon packet in order to determine whether there is data buffered for that wireless device. This is wasteful of processing resources, as the wireless device is forced to process a multitude of information that is not useful if there is no data buffered for the wireless device. This is compounded by the fact that a beacon packet is broadcast every 100 ms or so. Further, during processing of a beacon packet, the wireless device must be in a normal operating mode, and therefore consumes power at a normal operating rate. This is wasteful of battery resources in portable devices, as the wireless device is forced to expend battery resources to process information that is not useful to the wireless device. Again, this is compounded by the fact that a beacon packet is broadcast every 100 ms or so.
Therefore a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.